The present invention generally relates to server booting, and more specifically, to remotely providing local server boot capabilities.
It is common today for a rack of servers to either boot from a local device such as a hard drive or DVD or boot from a remote cloud-based system via a local area network. However, each method has drawbacks. Booting from a local hard drive/DVD is cumbersome, as it requires significant setup and maintenance of a local operating system. Further, because the conventional method of booting from a local hard drive generally requires someone to physically connect a local device to each individual server to boot, this method may prevent a critical booting operation from occurring in a timely fashion if there is no one on site to perform the booting operation or it takes the person too long to find the right disk/equipment and/or the correct server. Local devices could also be subject tampering, replacing a local device with one that has malicious software hidden inside. Booting over a network is cumbersome, as it requires significant setup and maintenance of configuration, both on the server and on the remote boot device. Further, maintaining a relationship between a physical server in the rack and the operating system server across a network can be difficult. Remote booting can also be cumbersome because the remote server may need to be within the broadcast domain of the server that is booting, which provides opportunities for inadequate network configurations to cause problems.